Moving house, help me with packing please!

I'm moving on the 19th. I have packed 2 boxes so far of cds and books. now can someone tell me the best way to go about packing? what to pack first, how heavy boxes should be etc.... I don't want to leave everything till last minute.

I've always tried to make boxes as light as possible. I'd rather have 3 liftable small boxes than 1 big heavy one. We have lots of books/papers that get packed first (small boxes) because we won't need to use them till after we move. Other early to pack things could be winter clothes, spare bedding, kitchen stuff you use rarely. Normally this bit goes smoothly for us, but I make a mess of all the stuff we do use regularly which goes in at the last minute, so can't suggest much with that

We have just moved. We did as others have just said, packed things we don't use. For the few days before we lived on take out so we packed away the kitchen. Don't forget to pack a brew box for when you arrive. Also make sure you know which boxes are a priority for unpacking. We used a website called moveme.com which also sent us a free welcome pack that came in handy.

thanks for the advice. have packed up loads of bags of junk its amazing how much stuff you seem to acquire! am going to pack up soe clothes today and sort out a chest I bet theres notihing useful in it.

One tip is to put all estential items for school in one box and know where it is. I put uniform, book bags,homework books, musical instruments and school shoes all together. I then had all these essentials to hand and did not have to unpack a dozen boxes to find them. I forgot to put ballet shoes in though and it took 3 weeks to find them!

We had lots of stuff and heavy furniture. I had around 12+ boxes of books. Use small boxes for heavy stuff so you won't overload, medium for kitchen stuff, large for lighter stuff, such as quilts, bedding, etc. Write on every box, especially list any useful item. Have a washbag of stuff you need, think you're going on holiday and have a suitcase of stuff you need to be comfortable. Fill the boxes to the top, if they are heavy, put a lighter item in on top, if they are not filled, when another box goes on top they get squashed and might break. Stick bedding and clothes, quilts, etc in rubbish bags if you run out of boxes. Have cleaning items handy, use the mop bucket and stick them in the car. If you're moving plants, see the thread about moving plants in this section. I found a solution for them that cut the space.Make sure unessential items are packed together, that way you can store them in garage and you can unpack them later, if you are removing soon, you can leave them packed.

One thing I would suggest is that you label all boxes on the SIDES not just on the top as our removals firm did, as when they are stacked up you cannot tell what is in each box. It would have made the move and the unpacking so much easier if all boxes has been labelled on both sides.Also try and fill boxes systematically/like with like (ie books in one, CDs in another etc) and label with the room they came from (rather than will be going to).